Jean Béliveau, Leader of Canadiens and a Hero to Canadians, Dies at 83

Jean Béliveau in 1971, after the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup.Credit
Associated Press

Jean Béliveau, the powerful, elegant skater and goal scorer who was an idol in French-speaking Quebec from the time he was a teenager and, shortly thereafter, in the rest of Canada for his leadership of hockey’s greatest dynasty, the Montreal Canadiens, died on Tuesday. He was 83.

The Canadiens confirmed his death without specifying where he died. Since 2000, when a cancerous tumor was removed from his neck, Béliveau had survived a number of threats to his health, including strokes in 2010 and 2012.

With a naturally long stride and deceptive speed, the stickhandling finesse of a wizard and the solidity and strength to fend off checks, Béliveau was on anyone’s list of the greatest centers to play in the National Hockey League, and perhaps the greatest before the era that brought Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.

He played in 14 N.H.L. All-Star Games and was named the league’s first-team All-Star center six times. He twice won the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player. In 1965, after the Canadiens defeated the Chicago Black Hawks (now known as the Blackhawks) to capture the Stanley Cup, Béliveau was awarded the first Conn Smythe Trophy, from then on given annually to the M.V.P. of the playoffs.

Béliveau was more than a shooter, although with a potent backhand and accurate wrist shot, he led the N.H.L. twice in goals, scoring 507 in his career. He was the quintessential team leader, recognized leaguewide for his competitiveness and composure and an astonishing range of skills. An expert at controlling and distributing the puck — he also led the league twice in assists — he was in general the kind of player around which any given game revolved, and whose presence on the ice made his teammates better.

Early on he was deemed soft, but in the 1955-56 and 1956-57 seasons, when he won his first two championships with the Canadiens, he confronted the reputation head-on, leading the Canadiens in penalty minutes by a wide margin and sending the message that he was impossible to intimidate. It was received; from then on, he was a player whose toughness commanded respect (and a wide berth) from opponents. It helped that at 6-foot-3 and more than 200 pounds, Béliveau was among the biggest players of his time.

“Jean does everything so naturally well, he makes this game look terribly easy,” an opposing coach, Dick Irvin of the Black Hawks, who was a former coach of the Canadiens, said in 1957. “He’s not only a fast, clever skater with one of the most powerful shots in the game, but I’ve seen him go down-ice and balance the puck on the blade of his stick like a lunchroom veteran with a knifeful of peas.”

Béliveau played most of his career when the league consisted of just six teams: the Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Detroit Red Wings, the Black Hawks, the Boston Bruins and the Rangers. But like his contemporary Mickey Mantle, whose career in baseball began when there were just eight teams each in the American and National Leagues, Béliveau played into the expansion era, after six teams were added to the N.H.L. in 1967. (Both the N.H.L. and Major League Baseball now have 30 teams.)

Photo

Montreal Canadiens center Jean Béliveau attempted to score as he was guarded by the Detroit Red Wings' Tony Leswick in 1954.Credit
Associated Press

Regardless of the competition, Béliveau’s Canadiens were dominant, even more than Mantle’s Yankees.

He played with two generations of great players. In the 1950s, he teamed with Maurice Richard, the fearsome wing known as the Rocket; Bernie Geoffrion, an early practitioner of the slap shot who was called Boom Boom; Doug Harvey, the unyielding taskmaster on defense; and the Hall of Fame goaltender Jacques Plante. Then, in the 1960s, he skated alongside the nimble defenseman Serge Savard, the swift right wing Yvan Cournoyer and the cerebral center Jacques Lemaire. During his 18 full seasons, his teams won the Stanley Cup 10 times, including five in a row from 1956 to 1960.

After a hiatus, they won again in 1965, ’66, ’68, ’69 and ’71, with Béliveau as team captain. (Only Henri Richard, a longtime teammate who played several years longer, ever won as many as 11.) In 1971, after the Canadiens, who had finished third in the N.H.L.’s East Division, nonetheless defeated the Black Hawks in the Stanley Cup finals, Béliveau exited his playing career as a champion. At age 39, in 20 playoff games, he scored six goals and had a team-high 16 assists.

Soft-spoken and well spoken, a gentleman sportsman, Béliveau was cherished by his countrymen for his character as well as his prowess on the ice, and he became a public figure whose national stature was hard to overstate, a sports hero who traveled in the high-powered circles of business and politics and who was perceived as a worldwide ambassador for hockey, the Canadian national pastime.

In the early 1990s, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney twice offered him the opportunity to fill a vacant Senate seat, which he declined. In 1994, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, a friend, considered appointing Béliveau to the highly visible and prestigious (if ceremonial) post of governor general, the monarchy’s representative in Canada.

But long before that, Béliveau had become a source of Canadien — and Canadian — pride. On Jean Béliveau Night in 1971, as the Canadiens and their fans celebrated his career at the Montreal Forum, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau addressed the crowd.

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“Rarely has the career of an athlete been so exemplary,” Mr. Trudeau said. “By his courage, his sense of discipline and honor, his lively intelligence and finesse, his magnificent team spirit, Béliveau has given new prestige to hockey.”

Jean Arthur Béliveau was born on Aug. 31, 1931, in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, about halfway between Quebec City and Montreal, and grew up mostly in Victoriaville, about an hour to the southeast. He was the oldest of eight children, and his childhood — “in no way remarkable,” as he described it in his autobiography, “My Life in Hockey” (1994) — “was a typical French Canadian Catholic upbringing, one focused on family values, strict religious observance, hard work, conservatism and self-discipline.”

His father, Arthur, who worked as a power company lineman, built an ice rink every winter in the family backyard, and it became a gathering place for local players as young Jean honed his talent. He began playing organized hockey at 12, and through his midteens he played for school and, eventually, semipro teams.

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Béliveau waved to the crowd during a tribute for his 25 years with the Canadiens before a game in 2003.Credit
Andre Pichette/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

He also played baseball — as a pitcher and an infielder he aroused mild interest from professional scouts — and it was as a baseball player that he first left home at 16 to play for the summer for a team in the mining city of Val d’Or, in western Quebec.

But he soon cast baseball aside. In the 1940s, Quebec hockey was a web of local teams competing in leagues of different caliber, many with formal or informal ties to the Canadiens, and many players were paid despite being considered amateurs.

For a time, Béliveau resisted overtures from the Canadiens, although he joined them for temporary forays — two games in the 1950-51 season, when he was 19, and three in December 1952, during which he scored five goals. He also played for teams in Victoriaville and Quebec City, earning a living — with a hockey salary and off-ice jobs in public relations arranged by the teams — that was equivalent to or better than that of many N.H.L. players.

“Indeed for a short time I was making more than Gordie Howe or Maurice Richard,” he wrote in his memoir.

Finally, in 1953, after Béliveau, playing for the Quebec Aces, led the Quebec Senior Hockey League in scoring, the Canadiens’ general manager, Frank Selke, arranged for the team to buy the entire league, largely as a means of steering Béliveau to the Canadiens the next year. By 1956, Richard, the veteran, an unstoppable bulldog of a goal scorer, and Béliveau, the upstart, a graceful, all-around genius, were the most fearsome front-line tandem in the N.H.L.

“The difference between the two best hockey players in the game today is simply this,” Selke said in 1956. “Béliveau is a perfectionist; Richard is an opportunist.”

Béliveau married Élise Couture in 1953, just before joining the Canadiens for good. She survives him, as do their daughter, Hélène, and two granddaughters.

Among Béliveau’s many distinctions, he was the first hockey player to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, in 1956. After his retirement, the N.H.L. waived its usual three-year waiting period and voted him into the Hall of Fame in 1972. In 1998, The Hockey News listed him No. 7 on its list of the 100 greatest players.

After retiring from the game, he had a successful career in the Canadiens’ front office.

“When Jean Béliveau enters a room, conversations pause briefly as people silently recognize they are in the presence of greatness,” the Canadiens have written about Béliveau on their website. Such hyperbole is a reflection of his remarkable stature in Canada. In 2012, when he was in the hospital after a stroke, his place as a national hero was confirmed by the national leader.

A version of this article appears in print on December 4, 2014, on Page B19 of the New York edition with the headline: Jean Béliveau, Leader of Canadiens and a Hero to Canadians, Dies at 83. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe